If people only talked facts, a widespread silence would arise

If, by some miracle, a large number of people were forced to only form words which accurately reflected the facts, a widespread silence would result. This is because most of what gets discussed nowadays, does not correspond to the facts, but arises from a wide variety of opinions and passions. The thing is that whatever we add to external conditions, without it corresponding to the facts, extinguishes our potential for higher knowledge.

It even happened that a small experiment for law students was minutely prepared and carried out on twenty people. The twenty were then asked to describe in writing what they had seen. Three got it half right and seventeen totally wrong.